The invention relates to a holding device for holding cylindrical fiber optic components of a fiber track on a printed circuit board.
A fiber track on a printed circuit board can comprise different cylindrical fiber optical components which are assembled on a printed circuit board. The cylindrical fiber optical components can comprise for instance photo detectors, fiber optical splices, fiber optical couplers, fiber optical taps, micro-optic wavelength division multiplexers and optical fibers or a bundle of optical fibers.
On a conventional printed circuit board, these different kinds of cylindrical fiber optical components are glued together or spread out on the printed circuit using conventional fiber component holder clips. When gluing different fiber optical components together, this has the severe drawback that a single fiber optical component cannot be separated again or replaced by another fiber optical component. Spreading out the different fiber components on the printed circuit board has the disadvantage that a lot of space is occupied on the printed circuit board. Furthermore, the fiber track assembly can become very confusing to the user leading to connection errors between the different fiber optical components.
Accordingly, there is a need for a holding device which allows easy attachment and removal of fiber optical components and which requires a minimal space on a printed circuit board.